


the facts i learned are right

by dimenovelcowboy



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not a lot though, Song: The Truth About the Moon (Newsies), Songfic, it just is, it's like mentioned a little i figured id tag it, it's not angst but it's not fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28172286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimenovelcowboy/pseuds/dimenovelcowboy
Summary: davey's yearning, sees the moon, yearns more
Relationships: David Jacobs/Jack Kelly
Kudos: 21





	the facts i learned are right

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Truth About the Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/728559) by Alan Menken. 



Davey sits down heavy on his bed, heat still coursing through his body. 

Jack Kelly.

That boy is so stupid, and yet…

Deep breath, David, he tells himself. Yeah, his hand lingered a little longer on your shoulder than you expected. So what? It was just friendly, those boys are always touching each other, and so what if that thousand-watt grin he’s got makes you feel all kinds of warm-chocolate melty, because he doesn’t...he’s not...that. He’s not like you.

It would be easier if you weren’t like you, either, wouldn’t it? 

Davey flops backwards. 

“The moon is bigger in Santa Fe,” he mocks to no one in particular, taking on the thick Manhattan accent that colors Jack’s voice.

“Honestly.”

The edge of the moon is just visible from Davey’s perspective. It’s full tonight, he knows, and he sits up to try and get a better look at it. He finds an old school notebook and a pencil, searching for a blank space to write, because he has to get this out of his head or he’ll go crazy. 

“Moon,” he writes out, “a natural satellite of the Earth. Latin name: Luna. Hundreds of thousands of miles away from here. No signs of water or life or atmosphere. This is the truth about the moon.” 

Facts are steady and easy, which is more than he can say for everything else that’s going on. 

He knows it’s a full moon because Jack pointed it out to him before Davey and Les walked home. Davey had paused there, just looking - taking time he normally wouldn’t have. He would’ve liked to stay longer, to spend ages watching the moon with Jack, listening to his far-fetched desert dreams and hearing how his voice got softer, almost reverent, when it was just him and Davey, losing the brash swagger he supports with silver-tongued quips and shouted lies. 

“The facts are black and white, and yet I couldn't think of one while watching it tonight.”

Davey doesn’t lose his words, ever, and he hates that Jack can steal them so easily…

Well. No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t hate it, and that’s almost worse - he lets Jack do it, he knows he could keep his cool if he wanted to, but he doesn’t, not really, and therein lies the problem. 

“I saw the words all fly away, so fast, so far, until every letter, every number had turned into a star, and was the moon especially bright? I really can't recall, and this was the first time the facts of the matter didn't matter at all. Shall I try to deny all I've known for a moment that's gone? Would my heart let me be someone different from me from now on?”

Davey frowns, and keeps writing: “No. I learned the truth about the moon. The facts I learned are right.”

For the first time in...well, ever, the facts being right doesn’t matter to him. He’s come to prefer Jack’s made up or misguided stories:

“I only wish it made me feel like the lies I learned tonight. Lies from that dreamer, that dime-novel cowboy who believes in a fantasy called Santa Fe.”

This pulls a laugh from somewhere in Davey. He wrote that line teasingly, but he knows that’s one of the things that he loves most about Jack: his ability to dream up a better life, despite the fact that it’s something he’s never gotten the chance to know. 

He keeps writing. 

“Given name: Jack. Someone who seems to get by with a smile. Having no substance, he compensates with style. This is the truth about the boy, there's nothing more to say. Though...when I looked into his eyes, I could not look away, and if I first thought he was who he claimed he was, it's just because that kind of boy must be good at what he does, but then as gentle as a breath his hand was touching mine, then I discovered a feeling that somehow I could not define.”

Jack’s dreams scare him, too, if he’s being honest, which...well. Can’t get more honest than all he’s already written. He doesn’t want Jack to leave, he wants Jack to get his head out of the clouds and stop being so infuriating but also no, don’t stop, keep dreaming, just take me with you.

“Fly away, Santa Fe, you're the seed of a dream, not a plan.” 

Davey reads over this, then thinks about the way Jack gets when he talks about Santa Fe, the peace and hope it seems to bring him.

“Lovely dream, still, it seems like the dream of a boy, not a man.”

That’s what it is, really. It’s the dream of a boy who’s spent year after year after year facing his problems, standing up for himself and everyone around him, taking beatings and spitting the blood from his mouth and getting back up again to fight - the dream of a boy who, for once in his life, wants to be able to run away, wants to do something for himself, though Davey suspects that, as always, his motives aren’t entirely selfish - he thinks, somewhere in him, that he’d do everyone better by leaving, no matter how many times one boy or another has shown him that’s not true. 

Jack’s probably running away from that feeling too: if there’s no one relying on you, you can’t feel inadequate. 

Davey’s vaguely aware of the time getting later and later, and tries to refocus his writing. 

“So, at least I don't shed many tears down here in my cocoon, where I'm protected by my facts, like the truth about the moon.” 

He’s fumbling to finish this, words threatening to spill over and out of him. He could probably fill whole pages with just these thoughts, but he can’t. So instead:

“Moon, a natural satellite of the Earth. The same size no matter where you are,” he writes, trying to refute the yarn Jack spun earlier, of a giant moon in Santa Fe, splattering light over the dusty ground as thoroughly as paint specks Jack’s clothes and skin and hair - light that’s just as much a part of Santa Fe as that paint is part of Jack. 

“Latin name: Luna.” His handwriting becomes looser, and so do his reservations, as sleep tugs at the edges of his mind. “Lovely name: Jack.”


End file.
